


4C6F7665: pure [L]ight

by antheeia



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Light Angst, Memories, POV First Person, Post-Finale, Spoilers for Ending E
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 21:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11044299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antheeia/pseuds/antheeia
Summary: the time I was able to spend with you...It was like memories of pure light.





	4C6F7665: pure [L]ight

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something I've written because I've made the mistake to listen to "The Weight of The World" first thing in the morning and I decided that these two have grown too much on me not to write a little something about them. I haven't read any NieR: Automata fanfic before writing this and I just played the game, so I'm not very confident about how good my portrayal of them is, but I hope you enjoy the fic anyway. 
> 
> For the glory of mankind-- ? 
> 
> P.S.: The fic is not betaed, so if you find mistakes you're welcome to point them out

How many times did I kill you? I wish I could forget, or lose count, but I can’t — I thoroughly remember each one of the 143 times that I destroyed you and wiped your memories. Every single time my sword was stained with your blood, the metallic stench permeating my nostrils — I never knew that anything as disgusting as that smell could even exist. Every single time my hands closed around your throat and I squeezed and I squeezed, I closed my eyes and I squeezed until I almost felt like retching, that lump in my throat getting bigger and bigger, along with my pain.

 _Feelings are not allowed_ : I had to remind that to myself very often, and I told you that so many times — in each one of our existences, because nothing ever changes, and you always stay the same: so pure and bright and curious, so sweet and affectionate, so surprised at everything around you, so childish and yet so brave. Sometimes I wished you were different next time so that maybe I wouldn’t have to kill you. But then would that android really be you? Would it be the scanner model I know so well? Would it be the 9S that barely knows me and yet would risk his life for me? Sometimes I thought there was a mistake, that I didn’t do my job well and that your memories were still intact, because how could it be that you were a new individual and yet were so incredibly familiar? How could it be that your touch felt the same, your tone of voice always sounded so impossibly kind when saying my name and you shined in the exact same way? How could it be that in the end your tears and my own both always tasted so bitter? And so, even if it felt like we both were trapped in a loop of misery and pain, even if I wished for nothing but for it to end, I was so scared, 9S, scared that escaping that loop meant that I could never see you again.

 _Feelings are not allowed_ : that became my mantra, the only way I had to keep myself sane while I looked into your empty eyes for the umpteenth time, and you were dead, again, and I had killed you, again.

I could have wiped my own memories, you know? I could have forgotten each one of those 143 times: the times I killed you while you rested —  after you told me the terrible thing you found out, the secret of YoRHa, and I told you to lie down a bit, that we’d think about it later, that we couldn’t be reckless about it — and so you closed your eyes under the visor and your breathing became slow and regular, so peaceful and trusting, right before I stopped it; the times I had to run after you because you just _had_ to talk to the Commander _right in that moment_ ; the times you just didn’t want to believe it, you didn’t want to accept that you had been betrayed like that — and I didn’t want you to know either, believe me; the times I pretended not to notice that you knew and I prayed to myself that you wouldn’t tell anyone, that you would keep it to yourself one week more, one day more, but then the Commander noticed and gave me that order and I _had_ to do it, _you know I had to_.

I could have forgotten it all: the betrayal, the surprise and the disappointment on your face every time you felt the steel of my blade in your guts and you opened your eyes and looked at me, and your voice asked me a broken _why_ — and I could swear no weapon could ever hurt me as much as your face did in those moments; I could have forgotten your pleading eyes when you felt my grip on your throat and you tried to whisper my name, to beg me to stop; I could have forgotten your tears, your screams of pain and disappointment, that time that you used your last breath to tell me that you had trusted me so much and you just couldn’t _bear_ to know that I was a lie as well — and you didn’t scream, but you might as well have, because those words were carved in my memory ever since; the times you gathered your last strength, to tell me that you forgave me, that it was okay; the times I turned my head and walked away because I didn’t want my crying face to be the last image you experienced, and the times I stayed there by your side even after your systems were irreparably out of use and your data forever lost.

I could have forgotten all of that, but I didn’t. Because forgetting that would have meant forgetting _you_.

 _Feelings are not allowed_ , but no one could take those memories away from me. No one had the right to destroy the light of those images that made me glad I could recall everything so perfectly. No one knew what your bright smiles and playful laughter meant to me, how the sound of your voice always gave me hope, even when the situations were most dire and desperate, and how the shape of your face was so clearly impressed in my memory that I doubted even a complete memory wipe could erase it. In between all those deaths, yours and my own, there was _life_ , there was fighting, battles, war, there was exploration of strange places and half-destroyed cities, there were all those new plants and animals no one had ever seen before and your excited face because you were the one who found them first; in between all those deaths, there were all the precious memories of our time together, and I couldn’t allow myself to lose that for any reason in the world. You were always amazing, every single time I got to know you, and you deserved to be remembered. No one had the right to delete the last traces of each one of your existences from this Earth, and no one had the right to take the hope they gave me away from me: if my constant feelings of pain and regret were the price I had to pay to remember you, then it was a price worth paying.

 _Feelings were not allowed_ , but now YoRHa is not there anymore. No one’s here to enforce those rules anymore. And now, now that we’re the last YoRHa units left, now that the war is over, that everything is changed and our future is in our own hands, now that we broke out of the spiral of life and death we were trapped in, I wonder what happens now. I wonder how much you know about our past, how much you remember; how much you deserve to know and how much you’re better off not knowing.

But then you sluggishly open your eyes, finally waking up from the self-repairing rest the pods put us in, finally coming back; that’s when you see me, right by your side, and as soon as you realize — it takes you a couple of seconds, maybe because your visual sensors didn’t start working immediately — you smile: that bright smile you always have for me and me alone, the smile I’m so grateful to see every time even though I flawlessly remember every detail of it.

“2B! But… how?” and of course the first phrase you utter as soon as you wake up would be a question: that’s just like you. I can read the confusion on your face, and yet you can’t stop smiling. It’s a curious expression.

“You should ask Pod 042,” I say, and I allow myself to reciprocate that smile. Your eyes widen when you see that, and suddenly, your arms are around me, and you’re crying. Why? Why are you crying? Are you sad for everything that we’ve lost or are you happy for everything that we gained?

“I- I thought I lost you forever… 2B… I- I missed you so much.” you sob in between your weeps and while I hold you tight and delicately stroke some dirt away from your silver hair I think that we are alive and we have time, all the time in the world, and only life ahead of us. There’s no hurry, no struggle, no desperate battle to face. For once, I don’t know what I should do, I have no orders to follow, and instead of being confusing, it feels amazing. If this is what freedom feels like, no wonder humans valued it so much. But still, I think that freedom would not taste the same without you.

“I’m glad you’re here, Nines.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, the numbers before the title actually have a meaning, they're not random symbols! :3


End file.
